The Peace Pledge Union (PPU) is a British pacifistnon-governmental organization. It is open to everyone who can sign the PPU pledge: "I renounce war, and am therefore determined not to support any kind of war. I am also determined to work for the removal of all causes of war."[1] Its members work for a world without war and promote peaceful and non-violent solutions to conflict.[1]

A large part of the PPU's work involved providing for the victims of war. Its members sponsored a house where 64 Basque children, refugees from the Spanish Civil War, were cared for. PPU archivist William Hetherington[5] writes that "The PPU also encouraged members and groups to sponsor individual Jewish refugees from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia to enable them to be received into the United Kingdom".[6][7]

Like many in the 1930s, the PPU supported appeasement, believing that Nazi Germany would cease its aggression if the territorial provisions of the Versailles Treaty were undone.[8] It backed Neville Chamberlain's policy at Munich in 1938, regarding Hitler's claims on the Sudetenland as legitimate. Peace News editor and PPU sponsor John Middleton Murry and his supporters in the group caused considerable controversy by arguing Germany should be given control of mainland Europe. In a PPU publication, Warmongers, Clive Bell said that Germany should be permitted to "absorb" France, Poland, the Low Countries and the Balkans. This position drew criticism from other PPU activists such as Vera Brittain and Andrew Stewart.[9] At the time of the Munich crisis, several PPU sponsors tried to send "five thousand pacifists to the Sudetenland as a non-violent presence", however this attempt came to nothing.[2]

Some PPU supporters were so sympathetic to German grievances that Rose Macaulay claimed she found it difficult to distinguish between the propaganda of the PPU and that of the British Union of Fascists (BUF), saying, "Occasionally when reading Peace News, I (and others) half think we have got hold of the [BUF journal] Blackshirt by mistake."[10][11] There was Fascist infiltration of the PPU[12] and MI5 kept an eye on the PPU's "small Fascist connections".[13] After Dick Sheppard's death in October 1937, George Orwell, always hostile to pacifism, accused the PPU of "moral collapse" on the grounds that some members even joined the BUF.[14] The historian Mark Gilbert said, "it is hard to think of a British newspaper that was so consistent an apologist for nazi Germany as Peace News," which "assiduously echoed the nazi press's claims that far worse offences than the Kristallnacht events were a regular feature of British colonial rule."[15] But David C. Lukowitz argues that, "it is nonsense to charge the PPU with pro-Nazi sentiments. From the outset it emphasised that its primary dedication was to world peace, to economic justice and racial equality," but it had "too much sympathy for the German position, often the product of ignorance and superficial thinking."[8]

In 1938 the PPU opposed legislation for air-raid precautions and in 1939 campaigned against military conscription.

Initially, the Peace Pledge Union opposed the Second World War and continued to argue for a negotiated peace with the Nazis.[2] In February 1940, the Daily Mail newspaper called for the PPU to be banned.[16] Following the fall of France, however, the PPU abandoned the call for peace negotiations.[2] PPU members instead concentrated on activities such as supporting British conscientious objectors and supporting the Food Relief Campaign. This latter campaign attempted to supply food, under Red Cross supervision, to civilians in occupied Europe.[2] Throughout the war, Vera Brittain published a newsletter, Letters to Peace Lovers, criticizing the conduct of the war, including the bombing of civilian areas of Germany. This had 2,000 subscribers out of a British population of some 46 million.[17] Following the publication of a poster reading "War will cease when men refuse to fight. What are YOU going to do about it?", six members of the PPU (Alexander Wood, Maurice Rowntree, Stuart Morris, John Barclay, Ronald Smith and Sidney Todd) were prosecuted for encouraging disaffection amongst the troops. They were defended by John Platts-Mills and were convicted but not imprisoned. PPU members were also arrested for holding open-air meetings during the war and selling Peace News in the street.[18] The critical attitude towards the PPU in this period was summarised by George Orwell, writing in the October 1941 issue of Adelphi magazine: "Since pacifists have more freedom of action in countries where traces of democracy survive, pacifism can act more effectively against democracy than for it. Objectively, the pacifist is pro-Nazi."

The group had a branch in Northern Ireland, the Peace Pledge Union in Northern Ireland; in the 1970s this group campaigned for the withdrawal of the British army from the Six Counties, as well as the disbandment of both Republican and Loyalist paramilitary groups.[20]

The Peace Pledge Union's 21st-century activity has included taking part in British protests against the 2003 Iraq War.[21] In 2005, the PPU released an educational CD-ROM on Martin Luther King's life and work that was adopted by several British schools.[22] In recent years, the PPU has focused on issues including Remembrance Day,[23] peace education,[24] the commemoration of World War One[25] and what they describe as the "militarisation" of British society.[26]

One of the PPU's more visible activities is the White Poppy appeal, started in 1933 by the Women's Co-operative Guild alongside the Royal British Legion'sred poppy appeal.[27] The white poppy commemorated not only British soldiers killed in war, but also civilian victims on all sides, standing as "a pledge to peace that war must not happen again".[28] In 1986, Prime MinisterMargaret Thatcher expressed her "deep distaste" for the white poppies,[29] on allegations that they potentially diverted donations from service men, yet this stance gave them increased publicity. In the 2010s, sales of white poppies rose. The PPU reported that around 110,000 white poppies had been bought in 2015, the highest number on record.[26]

^"Miss Brittain and others found objectionable Murry's advocacy of a "Pax Germanica" on the European continent" Quoted in Richard A. Rempel, "The Dilemmas of British Pacifists During World War II", The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 50, No. 4, Supplement, December, 1978, pp. D1213-D1229.

^"In a leading article the Daily Mail urges the Minister for Home Security (Sir John Anderson) to suppress the "near-treasonable work" of the Peace Pledge Union". "Peace Pledge Union National Menace".The Courier-Mail (Brisbane),24 February 1940, (p. 5)

^"They will be coming from every part of Britain representing bodies as diverse as the Peace Pledge Union, Britons vs Bush and the Woodcraft Folk. There will be people from dozens of small, newly formed anti-war groups from towns, villages, churches and colleges, many of whom have never been on a protest before." Quoted in Terry Kirby, "Doves on the warpath: a million ordinary Britons prepare to demonstrate for peace" The Independent (UK). 13 February 2003. Retrieved 24 June 2011.